With phones becoming more and more intelligent, their distinction with a computer is slowly becomingobscure
CARDI0 Voice Monitoring, a New Jerseybased company has developed a telephone with a built-in heart monitor
which will storm the us market this year.
Called CardioVoice, the telephone looks
exactly like the conventional one but has
an electrode in its receiver that can be
used to monitor the heart rate and
rhythm.
The CardioVoice phone will cost
about us $180. The receiving station is
much more expensive, that is, us
$10,000. Despite the high price, the
company hopes to receive a good
response as there are about 60 million
Americans with known cardiac disorders. Users only have to press a button
on the telephone to call up their doctor's office and then hold the handset
against their chest. The data collected by
the phone is passed to a receiving station
based at the doctor's office.
Apart from the CardioVoice phone,
there are a number of other smart
phones available in the market. Another
us research company probe estimates
that about 2.1 million smart phones will
be sold in the us this year and the figure
is expected to reach 9-5 million by 2000
AD. Another phone that will hit the us
market is the Internet home phone. This
phone can be used for exploring the
Net. it contains a display screen, about
seven inches wide, as well as a built-in
keyboard, microprocessor, modem and
Web browser software for exploring the
Internet. Moreover, there is no special
software to load or any complicated
start-up procedure to remember. Once
into the Internet, users can enjoy e-mail
facilities, access data-bases or conduct
online transactions. Companies which
are going to market Internet phones
include the Dutch electronics giant
Philips, and the California-based Cidco
and Navitel.
The us company
Diba, and Mitsubishi,
the Japanese electronics
group are jointly developing so called 'information appliances',
consumer devices that
can be used for fax,
e-mail and accessing
online services. These
phones will cost us
$300 to 500 each and
users will have to pay a
monthly subscription
of $20 to $25.
Naviteps product,
the Touch Phone, uses
Microsoft's Windows
CE operating system, a cut-down version
of the Windows 95 operating system
used on many desktop Pcs. Touch
Phone also uses a web browser developed by Microsoft. According to the
Electronic Industries Association of the
us, about 95 per cent of us homes have a
telephone, with an average household
owning 2.4 phones.
The supporters of Internet home
phones point out that they are much
easier to use than a Pc. "There is a pentup demand for simple cost-effective
Internet access devices," says Robert
Simon, Navitel's executive vice-president. The potential users for Internet
home phones are many as the phones
could be used for home shopping
and banking, collecting travel data or
restaurant information or conducting
financial transactions.
The chairperson and chief executive
of Philips Consumer Electronics,
Doting Dunn says that these products
have a large clientale. Smart phones
could reach a 10 per cent penetration
level in the us by 2000 - and that is a
conservative estimate.
A number of companies including
Cidco, Philips and the telecoms company
Sprint have launched telephones which
conform to a standard known as Analog
Display Services Interface (ADSI), developed by a company Bellcore. This
will enable standard analogue phone
networks to handle data and speech.
Telephones which have ADS[ faCilities consist of large liquid crystal display screens for displaying text information
and can download special programmes
called scripts. Some telecoms companies
Use ADS1 to offer a service known as Call
Surfing on the Net can be done with this new phone
Waiting Deluxe which not only warns a
user that someone else is trying to call
but also displays the name and number
of the person. It also allows companies
to send financial, business and enter-
tainment information over the phone
network.
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